Sunday news round-up: The hounding of Hoon, and other expenses

The Mail on Sunday took the unusual step of sharing its front page story with other Sunday papers today, ensuring Geoff Hoon’s ‘three homes’ scandal was splashed around generously. Hoon was outed for living rent-free in Admiralty House for three and a half years – apparently due to security reasons as he was defence minister at the time – while claiming expenses on his home in Derby and renting out his London townhouse.

The general impression of MPs rolling around in public money like pigs in litter isn’t helped by the shabby excuses they put out when Paul Dacre and friends inevitably track them down. Hoon told the Mail:

I only claimed whatever the rules allowed for. The [Commons] fees office was aware what was happening. Indeed, I was told to move to Admiralty House on security advice. I was told unless I went into secure premises I would have to have round-the-clock police protection at my home in London and that would cost the taxpayer a great deal more.

As more revelations showed Jacqui Smith claimed £304 for a barbecue – they must have been pretty amazing burgers – the home secretary took the the blue airwaves of the Telegraph to defend herself. “I thought that was the wrong thing to do [to claim for her husband’s porn films] and that’s why what we immediately did was apologise and pay the money back,” Smith told the newspaper, using that cunning New Labour formulation that looks like an admission of error but is actually just an excuse.

Amid all the expense hounding, one story in the Telegraph made me laugh. Philip Hollobone, MP for Kettering, is loathe to claw back expenses from the taxpayer and is apparently keen to get his annual claim even lower. “I’ve got a board [with my name and contact details on it] at Kettering Town football club and that’s £15,” he told the paper. “I could stop that.” I think we can all allow him that little bit of hedonism.

 

Jacqui Smith, Tessa Jowell and Harriet Harman: a week to forget

What an awful week it’s been for the women once dubbed Blair’s Babes. Now grown up, they’re taking a battering from all sides. Since the Mail on Sunday ‘outed’ Jacqui Smith over expenses for a second home two weeks ago, she’s had to face the embarassing prospect of an investigation led by John Lyons.

Tessa Jowell’s estranged husband, meanwhile,  has managed to clock up a four and a half year spell in an Italian clink for accepting the modest ‘gift’ of $600,000 from Silvio Berlusconi.

And then the Daily Telegraph heaped more bile on the female cast of the cabinet today with an excoriating assault on Harriet Harman.

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Headlined ‘Britain’s most deluded woman?’, Andrew Pierce’s piece quoted some off-the-record Brownite heavies who rubbished Harman’s ambition to lead Labour and described her as as a “deluded woman” who “has really lost it”.

Pierce went on to quote one of these aides making a “typically icy observation” about Harman’s plans for a women’s conference in the run-up to the G8 summit in April:

I expect she thinks Michelle Obama will pop in for a girlie cup of tea and a photoshoot.

The tone of the piece was remarkably savage. It was also another example of the thuggery of Brown’s confidantes, who have to have won ‘bitchiest briefing of the year’ with this little effort.

Thanks to Alex Hughes for the playing card images.